Lack of gifting on PSN is one of the biggest missed opportunities!

[Bryank75]

PlayStation has an incredible userbase, highly active and dedicated to the platform but one of the biggest missed opportunities in my opinion...

Having gifting of both full games and PSN credit would help build friendships and lead to more software sales, more people could meaningfully advise others to try games and then help them buy the game. Later people would then possibly return the favor....

Birthday gifts on PSN would be massive and there could be a way to remind people when it is somones birthday and give discounts for buying them gifts (5-10%) etc.

There are many possibilities with this and the potential to increase sales and profit is potentially being underestimated.

Frankly, I am surprised it has taken so long and there seems to be no mention of it yet.

Is it a feature you'd like to see? Would you use it? Am I overstating the benefit?

 

[arvfab]

You can buy PSN cards as presents and for Sony it's probably the more profitable way:

You need to buy a 20€ card for a 15,99€ game, for example.

 

[TubzGaming]

I have always wanted gifting to be a part of PSN.
I understand there would have to be some kind of limits put on it, so people that share accounts or have had them hacked don't have someone going nuts with it:
There would only need a few "barriers" in place to help avoid abuse of the service.
- Only able to "Gift" so many games within a set amount of days/weeks/months
- Being "friends" with the person for a set amount of time before being able to "Gift" a game
I would like something like this to work as there has been a few times i have wanted to gift games for people birthdays/holidays but i have had to buy a code "if i can" or buy a disk version wait for it to come then ship it to them.

 

[Gediminas]

You can buy PSN cards as presents and for Sony it's probably the more profitable way:

You need to buy a 20€ card for a 15,99€ game, for example.

if it is a present, how do you know what other gonna buy? if it is present, you shouldn't bother also.

but in this example. 4€ still stays in your account and you can purchase whatever you want, or combined this 4€ with card payment.

 

[Ezekiel]

Platform holders probably see it as a slippery slope : you allow people to buy games for others, why not also allow to give a digital game to another (digital license transfer)? Basically introducing digital aftermarket sales. I imagine they wouldn't want that. PSN cards makes more sense for them.

 

[arvfab]

if it is a present, how do you know what other gonna buy? if it is present, you shouldn't bother also.

but in this example. 4€ still stays in your account and you can purchase whatever you want, or combined this 4€ with card payment.

Oh you won't know, of course. You could say: it's credit for that game, but most probably you are just going to buy a card of X€ value.

And yes, you still have 4€ in your account, but they are already in Sony's pocket, without any way to get them back.

 

[ethomaz]

You can buy and figt a PSN card... it works exactly the same with the advantage of the guy receiving the gift having the choice to have better tastes when the person that gifted him and choose another game to buy.

 

[Nhomnhom]

They don't have that sort of technology.

 

[Gods&Monsters]

What are these "friends" you speak of?

 

[TubzGaming]

What are these "friends" you speak of?

 

[Sircaw]

PlayStation has an incredible userbase, highly active and dedicated to the platform but one of the biggest missed opportunities in my opinion...

Having gifting of both full games and PSN credit would help build friendships and lead to more software sales, more people could meaningfully advise others to try games and then help them buy the game. Later people would then possibly return the favor....

Birthday gifts on PSN would be massive and there could be a way to remind people when it is somones birthday and give discounts for buying them gifts (5-10%) etc.

There are many possibilities with this and the potential to increase sales and profit is potentially being underestimated.

Frankly, I am surprised it has taken so long and there seems to be no mention of it yet.

Is it a feature you'd like to see? Would you use it? Am I overstating the benefit?

I have twenty codes of Volcano high beta ready to go, as soon as they add the option to gift, my friends are in for a real treat.

 

[Old Gamer]

The notifications for wishlisted games on sale were a bigger priority IMHO. And it took them several years to implement that.

 

[Zeroing]

I agree sometimes my sugar daddy wants me surprise me with games but he cannot do it

But now being seriously there’s PSN cards thank god. I think Sony doesn’t implement it because it could have more problems than cons. I can already imagine people abusing that system.
Just like there’s online PSN accounts for “sharing” games…